Baldwin's St.James - shambolic, unprofessional bunch

I think you can buy from sellers but also recommend improvements. Saying basically “if you don’t like it, leave” is very elementary.

If I buy a house and then renovate the kitchen, would you say I shouldn’t have bought the house?

Businesses are always making changes, and we the consumers should happily offer up our suggestions. For me, I would prefer if CNG publicized when a consignor was bidding on a lot. But it’s not an issue that bothers me so much that it would make me never buy from them again. At days end, these are businesses, and I’m quite confounded why so many seem to view them as sacrosanct, immune from any constructive criticism and critical of those who offer it.

 

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Lots of new firms pop up all the time. The owners presumably think, like some posters here, it is a good (and maybe even easy) way to make money. Many of them go out of business, too, after finding out it is not so easy after all.

If you want to sell coins you have to compete to buy them or get them on consignment (and that is very competitive) and you have to work hard to find a good client base to buy them (at prices that that must be competitive). Now, if there were only a few firms selling ancient coins maybe you could postulate some anti-competitive cabal, but we all know there are over 100 firms on vcoins alone and many auction firms (which you can find on sixbid, numisbids, biddr.ch, etc.)

You can decide whether ancient coins are worth their cost to you, or not. Fees may seem high, but I think the market is telling us that fees are only high enough to keep some, but not all, dealers in business.

 

Actually, Market Dynamics is that elementary. We all just make it too complex.

Purdy simple: Do you want it? or will you shop elsewhere? If you (many, a lot, all of us) shop elsewhere, then either the Provider changes their model, or they go out of business.

@Valentinian, whom I deeply respect as a very knowledgeable Dealer, Hobbyist, Font of Information, survivor of this competitive market, said it above.

 

This is a peculiar perspective, which I find hard to share. Would you say the same about, for example, your mechanic, your cobbler, or your plumber? All of these people make a profit from my business because they know more about cars, shoes, and plumbing than I do.

The same applies to the coin dealers I buy from: they make a living because they know more about numismatics and the coin market than me, and provide me with a valuable service based on this expertise.

I don’t depend on a single coin dealer. It’s a free market - if I find an auction house or dealer unreliable, unsympathetic, or less knowledgeable than expected, I can take my business somewhere else, and I unfortunately had to do so a couple of times. But if a dealer asks for fair prices, is pleasant to deal with, and knows their coins, I see no reason why they shouldn’t earn money from me or why I shouldn’t be friendly with them.

Again, it’s similar to other services - neither my honest mechanic nor my trusted coin dealer is my antagonist. In fact, I want their businesses to thrive and survive since I benefit from their services.

When it comes to dealers bidding in auctions, I don’t see the problem. Frank, for example, will enter a high number of low bids on coins that he expects to be able to sell for a bit more than he agrees to pay. That requires a good knowledge of the coin market to work out. Most of his bids will fail since a collector also saw the coin and bid what it was worth to them. On some coins, though, he will be successful, and if his guess was correct, he’ll be able to sell them with a profit in his own auction. I can’t see anything unfair about this - collectors bidding fair current market value will outbid dealers about any time.

 

It is a way not to bother dealing with issues brought up but instead paint the person as being unreasonable for voicing issues. Of course we know we can not buy coins.

Again...often times coins are not like mass produced items (altough they are mass produced.) Very often you can't just go find the exact one you want from another seller. Going to sellers also present their own issues. It's okay to discuss these issues...

And on new ancients that come to market...don't open that can of worms. It's a touchy subject... You will have Barford the cultural heritage fairy pop up here calling everyone looters and coin fondlers and the sellers will circle the wagons and insist everything should be fair game and unrestricted and every coin they sell comes from an old collection

 

Coin dealer and mechanics are different for sure bit don't get me started on mechanics and contractors. My father once gave me sage advice: "All contractors are crooks"

In essence the only way to proceed is to know they want your money, you want to keep it....so always try to get the most for the least amount possible. They will always try to get the most money they can as well. That is the free market and capitalism.

I think it's so true...my mechanic isn't my friend, he fixes my car for money and will charge as much as he thinks he can. Nothing wrong with that though...I don't need a friend I need my car fixed...he seems nice enough though but that is because he knows how to run a business

 

I agree but this is reasonable risk for me to take given the current market where coins easily reach 2 or 3 times estimate. if market was not as hot as now I would agree with you in the higher risks of doing this. Also nothing is illegal about this CNG does allow this to happen. This is also aligned with concept of free market isn't it? Anyone can bid on any coin if a bidder thinks the price is getting too high it's up to him to stop bidding , no one forced them to bid high.

 

Sorry, but your reply seems to mischarecterise my point. Not once did I complain about coins being expensive, mention retailing or collusion. Not sure where you pulled any of that.

Regarding disruption, I certainly did not suggest little old me could start-up out of the blue and cause such. I simply highlighted that charging fees 3x in excess of ebay's exhorbitant fees is likely not a sustainable business model in the new digital age. If what someone else said earlier is true, and consignment fees are already being waived and buyers fees being shared, then it seems such firms recognize this too, making my point rather uncontentious.

 

I had a reply but I’m going to erase it. I obviously agree with this statement wholeheartedly and I’ll leave it at that!

I think I’ve said all I want to say in this thread. Back to threads specifically about coins!

 

Of course this is not true unless you are consigning a collection worth something in the area of 7-8 digits.

 

I am only aware of 1 auctioneer who may be desperate enough to do this. The rest ask between 10-20% depending on their mood/needs. Of course I am not talking about consignments worth hundreds of thousands

 

It strikes me that far too many assertions that are not based in fact are being thrown about in this thread, which benefits no one and doesn't further reasonable discussion.

The initial issue in this thread, as I understand it, is that a dealer wanted to make opening-bid offers on a large number of coins in an auction, and the auctioneer refused to enter those bids for the dealer and subsequently banned the dealer from bidding in that auction.

Gradually the thread morphed into a semi-diatribe against dealers who were bargain hunting, auctioneers who were gouging, excessive auction fees, plus a lot of value judgments (e.g., phrases such as "not nice," opinions about what is a "fair profit," etc.) and unsupported (and probably unsupportable) assertions being made by collectors about dealers' and auctioneers' ethics, whether hoards were sustainable sources of coins, etc.

Personally, while I like a lively discussion about coin-related topics, I find that discussions go off the rails rapidly when personal opinions and assertions start being represented as facts. They're not. Collectors who are not also dealers (which includes me) have no direct knowledge about coin dealer and auctioneer practices.

Personally, I feel comfortable writing my own opinions about collecting ancient coins, but I would never present as fact my opinions about other businesses with which I have no direct, firsthand experience. At best, I could do research to collect statistically valid data about a topic or industry that I don't know firsthand, in order to support my opinions, but the mathematician in me realizes this is a lot of work, not particularly fun, and not how I want to spend my time.

Not winning a very desirable coin for your collection, at auction, can be very disappointing but casting aspersions on the auctioneer, the dealers who bid at auctions, etc., isn't the problem. It's reasonable to ask other collectors if they think the coin was overpriced, or your own assessment of its value (and your bid) was underpriced, but shifting the discussion to the auctioneer's practices, or the dealers at the auction, misses the point.

When I don't win a coin on which I'm bidding, it's because someone was willing to pay more for it than I was. Ultimately, whether that other bidder was a dealer, billionaire, Clio, or a tenacious doberman doesn't matter. As long as the auction's terms and conditions were applied equally and in good faith to all bidders, then I lost the coin fairly and squarely and it's time to move on to my next acquisition target.

 

Being that it was likely my initial comment that created this whole mess, I submit myself humbly to the CoinTalk jury for forgiveness

Here’s what I see happened: an opinion was asked for, I gave mine, and then through many replies a whole host of things were assumed, relevant statements ignored, emotion took over, and opinions became misconstrued with statements of fact. I see just from this statement how opinions are given as fact, emphasis mine.

“Not winning a very desirable coin for your collection, at auction, can be very disappointing but casting aspersions on the auctioneer, the dealers who bid at auctions, etc., isn't the problem.“

For me, had I lost my dream coin to a reseller, it would support my opinion as to why I am annoyed that the public must bid against resellers. To me then, that is a problem. Once I was informed it was in fact a proxy for a collector, you will note I stated I was very pleased for whoever won it. But of course I will always be sad I lost! Who wouldn’t be?

I think we’d all do well to remember this verse from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations:

 

BTW, the Vespasian denarius on which you were outbid is an excellent coin, and in my estimation would have been worth up to $3,000 (not including buyer's fees) to a collector -- at least, if I had been bidding on this coin that would have been my maximum. Similar types in slightly better condition fetch five figure hammer prices. So it's quite possible that the next incremental bid ($2500) would not have won the coin.

 

I shall remember this one my friend. Definitely a LMAO moment. Forgive me if I steal this from you and use it regularly. In fact I think this would be the perfect phrase to give in a first year lecture I will deliver. Thanks.

 

Nothing to forgive. You put out your viewpoints and opinions. That is always welcomed. OTHER opinions and viewpoints were ALSO posited. Those are other perspectives.

I am not as young as I was, however, in the perspective in my mind, I am still 21 years old. Just have to work hard to convince my BODY to keep up with that perspective. Unfortunately, we are are all on that same treadmill of time...

I promise, though, I HAVE had undergraduate coursework, graduate coursework, and several seminars - some from some great Universities - in Critical Thinking. I work hard not to shoot from my hip.

 

Brian, you also don't shoot from the lip either.

 

LOL

 

IMHO your issue here should be with Lego. If one dealer is buying all the sets, Lego should be making more sets. If Lego is limiting their sets artificially to make collectibles rather than toys and selling all they are willing to make to be inflated by third party, they are complicit in a matter that would cause me to blacklist them.....PERIOD! I find it ridiculous to buy things that are made to be collected for the purpose of being collected. That includes mint sets, NCLT and any coin that never was spent at face value. This is the ancient coin section of Coin Talk. We buy things that managed to survive the authorities that issued them. Perhaps if Lego were required to bury everything they made for a thousand years, I could see someone, then, paying more than issue price. As it is, the only Legos I like are the ones that can be used to build things and not kits that lose all their value if the package is opened. There is no comparison in the two matters. One is free market; the other, it it is done as you say, is complicit price fixing.

+1

 

I think we have all learned a good lesson here....that is...if I want a coin...don't bid against me because I deserve it more...and I don't want to pay a lot

Thanks for your consideration in this matter.